How Long Should a Resume Be? Expert Tips and Tricks

Why resume length matters

The length of your resume shows you know how to condense information and communicate what’s important, making a strong first impression on employers. It also shows you know recruitment best practices and etiquette, boosting your professional reputation.

Hiring managers expect a certain format, and when you align with their expectations, it has great advantages:

• Improves recruiter opinions: Employers love to see resumes that follow a traditional, easy-to-understand structure. Unnecessarily long resumes are often seen as an unprofessional red flag.
• Easier to absorb information: Following a typical structure puts employers in their comfort zone, allowing them to read your resume faster and understand your relevancy to their open role.

Of course, the ideal resume length differs depending on your industry, job type, and career stage. Let’s explore the most common lengths of resumes next.

One-page resume tips: When it’s the best choice

One page is the most common resume length for professionals. It’s ideal for most workers unless you have extensive relevant experience. This is also the top choice for people with less work history, like recent graduates, entry-level applicants, and career changers.

A one-page resume encourages you to pick your strongest achievements and skills and list them concisely. While it may be beneficial to provide extra qualifications, this increases the chances that recruiters will read less relevant details and skim over crucial ones. 

Here’s what we recommend adding to a one-page resume:

• Succinct work history: List two to four previous roles. Include the job title, company name, location, date of employment, and a list of achievements.
• Key achievements: Add specific work accomplishments using measurable metrics and percentages. This provides a lot of impact without taking up a lot of space.
• Relevant skills: Include five to 10 hard and soft skills. Read the job description thoroughly and choose highly relevant skills and competencies.
• Brief education: Describe your education succinctly, including any degrees you have, along with the institution, graduation date, and location.

Two-page resume tips: When it’s worth going longer

Do you have a significant amount of relevant experience? Professionals with over 10 years of experience may prefer a two-page resume to detail their background fully. You wouldn’t want to omit any critical accomplishments or skills, especially when applying for leadership roles.

When crafting a two-page resume, examples and best practices help ensure it’s well-formatted and structured. Here are a few tips:

• Start with crucial achievements: Make sure your most impactful details are on the first page so recruiters see them immediately. Add an impressive resume summary, and start listing your work experience in reverse chronological order.
• Add supplemental details: The second page should contain important information but not the most effective accomplishments. This page is better suited to showcasing your career history and confirming your education.
• Number the pages: Include a small “1 out of 2” in the corner of the first page and a “2 out of 2” on the second. This ensures the recruiter doesn’t miss a page.
• Put contact information on both pages: Include your contact details on both pages, including your name, phone number, and email address. This helps the hiring manager contact you if they’re interested.

Common mistakes to avoid in a two-page resume

A two-page resume is an excellent idea for experienced professionals, but it’s easy to make these common mistakes that affect the quality of your application. Here are some common pitfalls and how to avoid them:

• Trying to pad out your resume: Don’t add information just to stretch your resume into two pages. If you don’t have enough relevant experience, stick to one page.
• Placing key achievements on page two: Many hiring managers review both pages, but it’s still the first page that catches their attention. Be sure to add your best accomplishments to page one.
• Inconsistent formatting: Take a close look at both pages and make sure they align. The formatting, white space, fonts, and language should be the same and create one cohesive experience.

Beyond two pages: Academic and technical resumes

It isn’t common, but resumes can exceed two pages. Three or four-page resumes are rare and are usually used by the following professionals:

• Academic and scientific roles: Researchers and professors with complex projects, publications, grants, and achievements need extra space to provide details, including the results and dates of research.
• Freelancers and consultants: These professionals need space to describe their portfolios, especially if they’ve worked across many industries on varied projects.
• C-suite positions: Senior executives typically have a long career history with high-level achievements. These roles are high-priority, and recruiters need significant amounts of information to make a decision.
• Government roles: Federal and government positions may require extra information, including detailed security clearance and proof of citizenship.
• Technical positions: Technical workers may want to include multiple degrees, skills, and personal and professional projects. It’s also a good idea to include information from your GitHub profile.

Do any of these sound like you? Grab a flexible resume template that allows you to expand your resume into as many pages as you need.

How to trim your resume without losing impact

A one-page resume is most common, but how do you keep information succinct while still accurately describing your skills? Here are a few tips on writing a concise, polished resume:

• Use quantified achievements: Describe your achievements with measurable metrics. This gives power and tangible outcomes to your accomplishments, helping the hiring manager understand your relevance to their role.
• Take advantage of bullet points: Summarize your work experience with tidy bullet point lists. This helps you organize your information succinctly.
• Incorporate keywords: Add relevant keywords from the job description to help your resume pass through the applicant tracking system (ATS). These keywords increase your relevancy without taking up too much space.
• Proofread for irrelevant details: After you finish your resume, pick through it carefully and remove unnecessary details and words. For example, “in order to” can be shortened to “to.”

Check out our vast collection of resume samples for realistic examples of these best practices in action.

Looking for more tips and tricks? We answer even more popular questions in our extensive article library.

“A one-page resume encourages you to pick your strongest achievements and skills and list them concisely.”

Choose the right resume length and catch the recruiter’s attention

Knowing which resume length is for you helps you align with professional expectations and describe yourself succinctly. Consider your history, industry, and the job you’re applying to and pick the ideal length.

Most professionals will opt for the one-page resume. Recruiters expect this structure, and it’s much easier for them to read and digest your details when you submit one tidy page.

Make a resume with CVwizard, and you can build any length of resume you need. Simply add new sections, and the layout automatically adjusts to include new sections. It’s easy to use, too, so you can make as many resumes as you need – try making a one-page resume for certain applications and two-page for others.

References:

(1) Ladders, 2018: Eye-Tracking Study